## Facts

- Jose Tamayo-Reyes, a Cuban immigrant with limited English proficiency, was charged in Oregon with homicide arising from a stabbing.
- With counsel and an interpreter, he entered a nolo contendere plea to first-degree manslaughter and signed an English-language plea form describing rights waived.
- At the plea hearing, the judge and interpreter addressed the plea and rights; Tamayo-Reyes indicated he understood and wished to plead.
- In state post-conviction proceedings, Tamayo-Reyes argued his plea was not knowing and intelligent because the interpreter allegedly failed to translate accurately and completely, including the mens rea element.
- After an evidentiary hearing, the state post-conviction court rejected the claim, finding the interpreter properly and accurately translated communications; state appellate courts affirmed.
- Tamayo-Reyes sought federal habeas relief, asserting the state record did not adequately develop material facts about the translation and requesting a federal evidentiary hearing.
- The federal district court denied a hearing, treating the failure to develop facts in state court as inexcusable.
- The Ninth Circuit ordered a federal evidentiary hearing under a deliberate-bypass approach; the Supreme Court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether a federal habeas petitioner who failed to develop a material factual basis in state-court proceedings must satisfy the “cause and prejudice” standard (or show a fundamental miscarriage of justice) to obtain a federal evidentiary hearing.
2. Whether the more lenient “deliberate bypass” standard associated with Fay v. Noia and applied in Townsend v. Sain governs requests for federal evidentiary hearings when state-court fact development was incomplete.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit and held, 5–4, that the cause-and-prejudice standard governs a habeas petitioner’s failure to develop material facts in state court.
- The Court overruled Townsend to the extent it applied Fay’s deliberate-bypass standard to excuse such failures.
- A federal evidentiary hearing is available only if the petitioner shows (1) cause for the failure to develop the facts and actual prejudice, or (2) that refusal to hold a hearing would result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice.
- The case was remanded for application of this standard to Tamayo-Reyes’s request for a federal evidentiary hearing.

## Legal Principles

- A state prisoner seeking a federal evidentiary hearing after failing to develop the factual basis of a claim in state court must demonstrate cause and actual prejudice, or that denial would produce a fundamental miscarriage of justice.
- Failure to develop facts in state court is treated similarly to procedural default, reflecting concerns for comity, finality, and efficient allocation of fact-finding to state proceedings in the first instance.
- Prior doctrine allowing a hearing absent deliberate bypass is displaced in this setting; Townsend’s contrary rule is no longer controlling to the extent it excused inadequate state fact development without cause and prejudice.

## Conclusion

The Court required federal habeas petitioners who did not develop material facts in state court to satisfy cause and prejudice (or the miscarriage-of-justice exception) before obtaining a federal evidentiary hearing, tightening access to federal fact development and rejecting a deliberate-bypass approach in this context.


Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes, 504 U.S. 1 (1992)